Pittsburgh aims for AI boom with "strike team"
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A coalition of influential Pittsburgh-area stakeholders wants to make the region a competitive leader in artificial intelligence.
Why it matters: The two-year initiative, called AI Strike Team, could be propelled by the high-profile Stargate Project, a joint venture funded by tech giants like OpenAI to invest $500 billion in data centers and other AI infrastructure over the next four years.
Driving the news: The strike team has launched Operation Stargate Pittsburgh to secure potentially billions in investments.
- Stargate is considering placing new data center projects in more than a dozen states, including Pennsylvania.
How it works: Key players in academia, tech, labor, health care, economic development and more are part of an orchestrated push to position southwestern Pennsylvania as a top AI tech hub by 2028, hoping to attract tens of thousands of jobs.
- The team will focus on securing public and private funding for AI infrastructure, bolstering workforce development and endorsing policies to spur data center buildout.
- Part of the effort involves identifying remediated industrial sites for possible data center development — the Aliquippa riverfront is a prime target — and prioritizing Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility, or SCIF, space for defense tech.
Catch up quick: After Philips Respironics left its space in Bakery Square for the suburbs last year, "it was time to pivot and think big," AI Strike Team executive director and AI Horizons Summit founder Joanna Doven tells Axios.
- The city has a dynamic AI tech scene along "AI Avenue," anchored by Google, Duolingo, CMU Cloud Lab and UPMC Enterprises. Local AI-driven startups have seen major investments in recent years.
- Still, southwestern Pennsylvania lacks the necessary infrastructure and venture capital to rapidly build on momentum as AI begins to permeate sectors like health care, defense and energy, Doven says.
What they're saying: "(Companies) are going where there is speed and ease," says Doven, calling AI the new steel. "If they're pitched to with land, power and permitting, they will come."
- Doven says Pennsylvania must "leverage its natural gas" to support the energy demand of data center growth, noting the state is the nation's second-largest natural gas producer but lags behind states like Texas and Ohio in data center buildout.
By the numbers: Pennsylvania has 71 data centers, according to Data Center Map, about 42% of which are in the Pittsburgh area.
Friction point: Clusters of energy and water-intensive data centers can bring localized challenges for utilities and grid regulators, shake up the state's energy mix, slow grid decarbonization efforts and conflict with local communities.
- Many states, including Pennsylvania, have some tax incentives to lure data centers. The centers alone don't often provide vast local employment opportunities, but they bring construction jobs and can trigger long-term investment in a region, according to researchers at CBRE.
The latest: Startup TECfusions in January purchased 1,400 acres of a former Alcoa site and nearby real estate in Westmoreland County to build a sprawling data center campus, citing a need to meet growing demand for AI and high-performance computing.
What's next: The coalition will announce concrete projects by March.